The present invention provides a system and method for managing secure communications in an ad-hoc network having three or more users including a first user, a second user and a third user. Each user is associated with at least one communication device, and has a set of keys associated with the user for managing secure communications between the at least one communication device of the user and the at least one communication device of another one of the three or more users. Each set of keys includes a private key and a public key, where the public key is shared with the communication device of the other ones of the three or more users with which the user has been authenticated, and the private key is used to decrypt communications encrypted using the corresponding public key from the same set of keys. When the second user of the three or more users has been authenticated by the first user, in addition to receiving the associated public key of the second user, the first user receives a value defining a share authority level, which defines the authority of the first user relative to the second user to provide peer key sharing with the third user.